Never know it might interest someone for the future....
One of the BMW headlamps had suffered that browning of the polycarbonate to an unsightly look and possible MOT fail. It would have been both but one had already been replaced making the other look even worse in comparison.
New headlamp over £400 at Eurocarparts, used (with no guarantee adjusters were OK) about £80 inc post on Ebay.
So thought I'd give this Meguiars kit a go... without much hope in truth...
www.meguiars.co.uk/product/397/Meguiars-Headlight-Restoration-Kit/ (I bought mine for £17 inc post on Ebay)
But it was absolutely brilliant. Restored the lamp to a crystal clear new looking finish in around 30 mins. The process was...
Did a quick test with the kit polish on a cloth as they say and it was obvious I would need to apply the "stubbon" bit of the kit. This is two pads (about 2" square) of foam with wet & dry on each side marked 1,2,3 & 4 plus extra instructions. Start with the 1 going horizontal, then 2 vertical and so on.
(Note the grades of pad sides were 1800, 2400, 3200 & 4000)
Finally finish off with the supplied small polish mop (with pad and spindle inc) and the included buffing polish.
The result far exceeded my expectations.... turned a scrapper light into a sparkler. I also buffed up the OK headlamp just with the polish on a mop and did the two dull estate inner tailgate lights with the mop/polish too.
I know you could buy all the bits required but it was so easy having it all supplied in one box and all you needed was a drill, bucket of water and a soft cloth. This kit would do two bad headlamps plus a buff up on your rear lights with some left over.
Last edited by: Fenlander on Sat 17 May 14 at 10:13
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That's a useful piece of info, Fen.
My last couple of years with the Mondeo had the MoT testers shaking their heads and humming before granting the certificate, all down to the R/H headlight with a yellowing plastic. Lots of elbow grease and judicious use of various kitchen products brought it up to an acceptable level until the next time, but a product like that would have been a boon.
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Or.. just use toothpaste.
I found the one with baking soda worked a treat!
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>>>Or.. just use toothpaste. I found the one with baking soda worked a treat!
Yep anything paste and abrasive will do a light bloom but I'd tried all such products... T.cut, cutting compound, hob bright, Brasso etc... to no avail.
This kit is to recover apparently unrecoverable condition and is so impressive in that situation.
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For glass, or something of a similar hardness, jewellers rouge is the stuff. Cheap enough to buy and armed with a dremel or equivalent, works well.
I polished out scratches in the car's aeroscreens, and my neighbour has also used it.
The sort of plastics that sidescreens and rear windows in hoods are, brasso usually works well, but it's not aggressive enough for glass.
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>>and rear windows in hoods are, brasso usually works well,
Do you manage to get it clear, or kind of smokey?
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I've just finished doing the side windows on the caravan. They were quite badly scratched due to very limited access between the corner of the house and the 6ft concrete fence post opposite. An over-enthusiastic but useless next door neighbour didn't help.
I removed the windows one at a time to do them. Not an unpleasant job......I got the folding camp table out and I have an old computer chair in the workshop. Cranked up the CD player, phone and coffee handy. I worked on the scratches, some of which were quite deep, with 450 wet and dry followed by 1250. Then the dulled areas were brought back to life with Farecla G3, T Cut, toothpaste and HotSpot.
Worked very well. Unless you knew where the damaged areas were and looked closely, you'd never know.
Price for new windows...2 side windows and a smaller kitchen window.....just shy of a grand ! They're all marked with the VIN and are priced so a thief wouldn't be bothered to replace them all !
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Do you manage to get it clear, or kind of smokey?
Completely clear. Deep scratches may remain, but as the surface is now scratch free, it looks clear.
I mentioned it years ago to someone with rather a lot of old cars and they said that advice had been printed years ago in the VSCC magazine. I just did it as it seemed kind of the right thing and got excellent results for very little expense.
Brasso also works on CDs! Totally horrified my mother, but at the end of day I'd restored one of her CDs to playable condition from something that was only useful as a drinks mat.
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Headlamps on my Elantra were cloudy, simply used the Mirror Image polish I use on cars normally to clear it up, didnt need anything special, nor so incredibly expensive, 5 ltrs of my polish lasts me two years for £13.
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I know it works on CDs & DVDs, but in my experience it does leave them slightly cloudy.
Which whilst it doesn't impact the performance of the disc, might not look so great on a window.
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MX5 lenses were getting cloudy, so I've just polished them with Brasso. One is now perfect, the other still has some that looks as if it is on the inside, but doesn't look bad enough to be a problem for the MoT next month.
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>>>other still has some that looks as if it is on the inside,
It's possible but as a matter of interest I nearly gave up on the bad headlamp after a few minutes as I said to Mrs F it looks to be marked on the inside. I could see it wasn't at all once I was further through the process.
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Have previously used wet/dry paper to good effect on polycarbonate using similar grades to those for polishing aluminium.
Start ~400 and finish ~2000 for sparkly lenses.
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Brasso is quite good for polishing plastics. May be not fierce enough for your headlamp, if you need Wet & Dry, but well worth trying for lesser jobs.
I dropped my specs and got a mark which looked to be only in the outer surface coating and it got that out and with no ill effect and no visible sign of its use.
Years ago a hobby was to make things out of perspex and that was the usual way of polishing them.
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I'll need to try out something on the Toyota - one of the headlight covers is very dull.
Would just be aesthetics though. The headlights are terrible and I think the problem lies within the unit - a dulled projector lens. A lot of Soarer owners have gone the HID route with good results, but I'd be worried about the MOT.
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or the sake of accuracy...
Seems you should use a UV protector liquid after this renovation process. Some say a good car polish will do the job and that's what I'll try monthly and see if the bloom reappears this year.
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Meguiars Headlamp Restorer Kit Review - Brilliant - Robin O'Reliant
